Many Happy Returns! We’re delighted to be writing the editorial for this 20th anniversary issue of New Zealand Books. It contains the usual excellent reviews, but also new poetry and prose, and reflections from leading writers and those in the…

Beachfront So much advice coming your way like wind-blown leaves. ‘Never give up until you see indifference,’ one says; another, a woman recently split from her husband ‘for no good reason’, tells you ‘few women ignore persistence, so keep…

What they wrote A taste of contributor comments over our first 20 years On New Zealand Books My hope is that New Zealand Books will provide a forum for frank discussion that dares to rise above the suffocating confines…

An extract from C K Stead’s new novel. It was in December that Tom Roland was at home standing in front of the television set thinking about travel. The memory of a poem had set him off on this track.…

Jolisa Gracewood interrogates the reviewer within. “Why do I write?” the great George Orwell asked himself, and produced a typically brisk, self-lacerating answer with roots deep in his miserable childhood. Apologies to young Eric, but my “Why I review”…

Maori and the State: Crown-Maori Relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000 Richard S Hill Victoria University Press, $92.99, ISBN 9780864736116 Aotearoa/New Zealand 1950-2000 now seems like a foreign country. Of course it isn’t an unfamiliar country, in part because the…

Iain Sharp raises an eyebrow at the ghosts of reviewers past. Thanks to the National Library’s splendid Papers Past website, forgotten follies are now at our fingertips. In June and early July 1909, for example, every edition of the Ashburton…

The Politics of Equality: New Zealand’s Adventures in Democracy Leslie Lipson Victoria University Press, $50.00, ISBN 9780864736468 Leslie Lipson, an Englishman, became foundation Professor of Political Science at Victoria University College of the University of New Zealand in 1939.…

The Trouble with Fire Fiona Kidman Vintage, $36.99, ISBN 9781869793593 A woman approaching her 50th wedding anniversary flies from Auckland to meet her aid-volunteer husband in Bangkok, and they fly on to Hanoi, where he becomes seriously ill with…